A Beacon of Hope
by tangledribbons
Summary: In which Ginny gets drunk a lot, Harry is an arse and Blaise is out to enslave the whole of the wizarding world through clever book marketing.


A/N: To those following me and still wondering, I am actually planning a Chaos sequel, it'll just take a while for me to write because I am a terrible human being. And a busy one. That too. In the mean time, have another soppy little one shot!

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Ginny Weasley frowned down at her textbook as once again the cycle of songs (Christmas, pop, jazz, Christmas) wound its way round to 'Jingle Bell Rock' for the fifth time that hour. And yes, she had been counting. It wasn't often that she found herself in a muggle café and even less often that she found herself in a muggle café this close to Christmas and she was beginning to realise why Hermione had given her such a strange look when she had told her where she was going and what she was going to be doing there. The atmosphere, whilst somewhat pleasant, wasn't exactly the sort to encourage studying. She would have given up long ago and people watched instead, one of her favourite hobbies, but she had chosen one of the quieter cafes down her street in the hope that it would help her to focus if there was less to distract her. Of course, she hadn't been counting on the ridiculously cheerful music being piped into her ears.

She ran a hand through her hair, trying yet again to refocus her attention on the summary of Caravaggio's early life that she had been reading for the past fifteen minutes. The door banged shut and she gave up. Okay, so she'd never exactly been a Hermione when it came to studying, there was a very good reason why she hadn't been in Ravenclaw after all, but this was getting ridiculous. Of course, the real reason she couldn't take in any information about long-dead Italian painters had nothing to do with obnoxious Christmas songs or banging doors but she wasn't thinking about that right now. She was fed up with thinking about that.

The barista laughed at something and Ginny pushed her textbook away from her, pulling the teapot onto her side of the table instead. It was long cold, but a whispered spell had it steaming again and a large gulp had it warming her insides.

"I'm fairly sure that's illegal."

She looked up into the eyes of the man that she least expected to see in a muggle café. Blaise Zabini was standing over her table holding a steaming mug of coffee in one hand. He had a suit on. A muggle suit. A nice muggle suit. It was strange to see him in anything other than school robes but then again he was probably thinking the same about her in her jeans and blouse.

"Can I sit?" he asked, not waiting for her answer before pulling the chair opposite her out and taking a seat in it.

"Doesn't look like I have much of a choice, does it?" Ginny smirked. She didn't remember ever talking to Zabini at Hogwarts. Sure, she'd spoken to his friends often enough. Well, more exchanged insults than spoken, but still.

"Not now that I know about your illegal use of warming charms in muggle populated areas, you don't," Zabini grinned. "Caravaggio, eh? Good choice."

"Not my choice. I'm doing a degree."

He carried on flicking through her book, but he raised an eyebrow in interest.

"A muggle degree? Weren't you one of the top students of your year?"

"Hmmm. None of that really matters though, does it? Not many bragging rights in coming top of a class where half the students died."

Zabini was silent and Ginny had to choke back her instinct to apologise with a gulp of tea. Harry was doing enough apologising to the sons and daughters of death eaters for the entire magical community, there was no need for Ginny to start joining in as well.

"So you went muggle, huh?"

"Yep," Ginny said, nodding a little. They sat in silence for a while, drinking their drinks. The Christmas music played in the background and a cold draft blew into the café when some customers left.

"You going to the Ministry Ball next week?" Zabini asked, draining his coffee.

"Hermione invited me, she's on a break with Ron so she has a spare ticket. Should be… fun?" She tried not to sound doubtful about it but from the smirk on Zabini's face she didn't manage it too well.

"Not a Ministry fan, huh?" He asked, "Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised, what with the muggle degree and all."

"Not really. I mean, after the war and all…" She left it unsaid that everyone else had forgiven the ministry just like that, with only a token effort at wheedling out the corruption. She almost admired Lavender Brown for leaving the English wizarding world for America.

"Interesting. So Ginny Weasley can hold a grudge then? I'll keep that in mind. Anyway, I'll see you at the ball next week."

He shot Ginny a wink and scraped his chair back, pulling a fancy black coat on and leaving as quickly as he came. Ginny took a second to process the sudden exit and then pulled her book back towards her. She had to at least finish a chapter before she went home or Hermione would possibly kill her.

It was a week after Christmas and Ginny was bundled up in her coat and scarf, cheeks pink and ginger hair loose and frizzy, floating around her head like a halo. She pushed the door to the coffee shop open with one hand, pulling her scarf away from her mouth with the other.

"Tea?" The barista asked when she approached the counter. Ginny smiled and nodded.

"Please," she said, pulling her gloves off.

"Weasley!"

Ginny turned to see Zabini sitting at a table by the window with a smirk on his lips. Ginny smiled at the barista and picked up her tray awkwardly, trying not to drop the textbooks she was holding in the crook of her arm.

"Fancy seeing you here," She said as she sat down opposite him, clonking her tray onto the table and unwinding the scarf from her neck.

"Fancy," Zabini said, still smirking. Ginny had often wondered at school whether constantly smirking was something they taught Slytherins in first year, and she was beginning to wonder whether she'd been right or not.

"You looked like you were having fun at the ball," Ginny smiled, remembering the few glimpses she'd caught of him across the hall, laughing with Draco and Pansy, having very serious conversations with various Ministry officials and generally looking very smug at all times.

"You too," Zabini told her and Ginny was forced to remember her own time at the ball; spending the first hour or so fending off well-meaning gossips wanting to console her about the breakup with Harry that had happened years ago now before she finally got fed up and got riotously drunk. That was where it all got a bit blurry.

"I especially liked the bit where you told the minister that she looked like a pygmy puff and also the bit where you danced with Draco on the bar. Actually, I think that was my favourite bit."

Ginny groaned. It turns out that getting as drunk as that in front of basically everyone she knew in the wizarding world wasn't actually a good idea after all. Every time she'd bumped into anyone since then, they'd come out with new titbits.

"I danced with _Malfoy?_" She asked, letting her head thunk down onto her books.

"A very nice dance. Very classy. I'm surprised you didn't see it in the Prophet."

"It was in the _Prophet?! _Why was it in the Prophet?"

"Well, the headline was 'Feuding families come together in beacon of hope'. You should be proud. You're a beacon of hope."

"Stop laughing at me!" Ginny giggled, picturing Malfoy's face when he saw the paper. Also Ron's face.

Zabini grinned and took a sip of his coffee, wisely keeping his mouth shut. Outside it was starting to snow and he watched the people in the street walk past. He liked the muggle world in winter. Everyone all bundled up in puffy coats and hats and scarves and gloves. Wizards just put on a cloak and used warming charms.

"So what are you doing nowadays, anyway? I forgot to ask last time," Ginny asked eventually, interrupting Blaise's train of thought. He looked away from the window to his companion and found her with both hands wrapped around the cup of tea that was halfway to her mouth.

"I'm the manager at Flourish and Blotts," He said. It was a job that his mother had hated him having, while she had still been alive. Apparently it was unbecoming of her son to do such menial work, but he enjoyed it. Plus, it had the added bonus of being able to subtly change people's opinions on certain things. For instance, all of the gossip, trash novels along the vein of Rita Skeeter's work had been moved to a dusty little corner, to be replaced with factual, unbiased accounts of the war.

"Interesting," Ginny nodded absently, eyeing him speculatively. "Why?"

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions."

"So you're out to take over the world through books then?" Ginny grinned, slurping her tea.

"I was a Slytherin, remember? We are ambitious, after all." Ginny laughed and shook her head in mock despair. She'd been expecting him to have some ministry job like so many of her friends did, or to be a rich layabout who occasionally flung his money at good causes like Malfoy. She never expected him to have such a… normal job.

They sat in comfortable silence for a minute or two, Zabini staring out of the window again and Ginny looking at her pile of textbooks with a small pout. Blaise saw the direction of her gaze and turned the top book around so that he could read the title.

"Moved on from Caravaggio, then?"

"Eurgh, yes. We're on El Greco now, and starting Botticelli next week. You know, we thought we had to work hard at Hogwarts, but at least we got decent breaks for Christmas. I had to cram all of my visiting into five days," she snorted, oblivious to the fact that she was ranting a little bit. "Gods, mum hated me for that. 'Not only are you doing that useless degree, you don't even want to see your family anymore! This isn't the daughter I raised!'"

Blaise laughed at her imitation of Molly Weasley. He'd heard the howlers over the years at Hogwarts and her daughter's impression was scarily accurate. Pulling back the sleeve of his suit jacket, he checked his watch.

"Well, it's time for me to go. I'll leave you to your studies," he grinned, downing the last of his coffee and heading to the door before Ginny could say a word. It looked like she'd have to get used to his sudden departures.

New Years day at three in the afternoon found a hungover Ginny hunched over a steaming mug of coffee at a corner table in the little café that she'd now become a regular of. She may or may not have been hiding, though of course if asked she would have vehemently denied this.

"Weasley, are you sulking?"

Ginny looked up and wasn't surprised to see Blaise helping himself to the chair opposite. He was wearing his fancy black coat again, but a maroon knitted hat had joined his usually professional ensemble. He pulled it off with one hand, using the other to quickly muss up his hat hair. On closer inspection, he looked about as hungover as Ginny felt.

"No. Of course not. Why would I be sulking?" She asked, too fast.

"Well, I heard from a little birdie named Malfoy, who heard from a little birdie named Hermione that a certain boy-who-dumps-perfectly-good-witches turned up to last night's New Year's party with a certain Lavender Brown on his arm. You can't tell me that didn't sting."

"Yes, I can," Ginny insisted, stubbornly.

"No, you really can't, because Hermione also told Malfoy that you cried in the bathroom for five minutes and then got riotously drunk and made out with Colin Creevey. Who I thought was gay?"

Ginny scowled at him briefly before thunking her head down on the table, instantly regretting the action when it caused fresh waves of pain to pound through her head. She groaned and sat up again, well aware that Blaise was now openly laughing at her.

"He's not gay, he's bisexual. And I did not cry in the bathroom."

"Oh, don't worry about it, Weasley. Do you have any idea of how long Draco cried last time Pansy dumped him? And he doesn't even like Pansy. Five minutes is an impressively short time to pull yourself together."

Ginny was silent for a moment and then she smiled half-heartedly. And then she groaned and resisted the urge to bang her head back down on the table in frustration.

"It was just so bloody embarrassing," she said, "I mean, Lavender Brown, of all people. He _hates _her. He just didn't want to be the one turning up alone. And he didn't even bloody care that it meant that _I _had to be the one to turn up alone, and nobody would tell me why they were acting all weird and tiptoeing around me and I just… Eurgh!"

Blaise had to hold back a smile. She was more worried about the embarrassment than hurt. That was a good sign, at least. He knew how to deal with that. Draco, after all, very rarely let himself get hurt, but he did let himself get embarrassed a disturbingly large amount.

"They'll forget all about it in a few days. They're probably all busy telling Potter he's an arse, anyway."

"He _is _an arse," Ginny agreed, smiling.

"So this is where you've been hiding!"

They both looked up and found Hermione staring down at them with her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. Then she cottoned on to the end of their conversation and began to look more curious than annoyed.

"Who's an arse?" She asked, sliding into the seat between them and pulling Ginny's barely touched coffee towards her. Ginny watched it go with something akin to longing. "And since when were you two friends?"

"Potter's an arse," Blaise told her, completely unfazed, "And since before Christmas. Why do you think Ginny's hiding? She's clearly just having coffee with a friend and not hiding at all, and if she were, it would definitely not be because she embarrassed at the spectacle she made of herself last night."

Ginny stuck her tongue out at him and took Hermione's moment of distraction to snag her coffee back, spilling a little in her eagerness. She didn't want to drink it, she just wanted to use it to warm her hands. Well, that and she was hoping that if she inhaled enough of the steam, she'd manage to absorb some of the caffeine. Hermione looked between the two of them with a frown on her face.

"Before Christmas?" She asked, refusing to accept Blaise's change of subject, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Ginny quailed under the sudden fixed attention and hugged her coffee mug closer to her chest.

"It didn't seem important," she muttered. Blaise raised an eyebrow at her.

"Not important?" He asked haughtily, "Not important?! I'll have you know that I'm highly important. You'll regret saying that when me and my books are ruling the world."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, your royal bookness," Ginny snorted. Hermione looked between them again in confusion. She took in Blaise's easy smirk and Ginny's little smile. She didn't get it.

"Why did you come find me, anyway?" Ginny asked and Hermione remembered why she had come in the first place.

"Oh, your mother is at the flat, wants to speak to you about something or another. Probably about last night."

Ginny groaned and covered her face with her hands. She had thought the café was an excellent hiding place when she'd woken up that morning but apparently it was terrible. She's expected Blaise to be able to find her, but Hermione as well? And now, if she didn't go home, Hermione was bound to tell Ginny's mum where she was. And this was meant to be her own little sanctuary. Why were people invading it so much today?

"Can't I just carry on hiding here and you tell her that you couldn't find me?" She tried in vain.

"I'm not lying to your mother," Hermione exclaimed at the same time as Blaise sent Ginny a hurt look and asked:

"So you _are _hiding? You lied to me!"

"She hates me enough already," Hermione moaned, "What with the Ron thing and everything. Which is silly when you think about it seeing as it was Ron who called the break this time, and I didn't even do anything wrong, but you'd never know that from the evils I'm getting. If I go back without you, she'll _know _I'm lying and I'll never get invited to anything ever again!"

"Oh, mum doesn't hate you, she's just annoyed that you and Ron aren't anywhere near close to giving her more grandchildren. You'll be fine, just tell her you couldn't find me or that I'll be home soon and then it'll just be my fault when I don't turn up!"

Blaise took a slurp of coffee, looking more awkward by the second. Ginny took a short moment to appreciate that Hermione was somehow managing to ruffle his unruffle-able feathers. Then Hermione was speaking again and Ginny forced herself to pay attention to her friend.

"Don't be silly, I'll do no such thing. It's only your mother, I'm sure she just wants to make sure you're alright."

Ginny glared at Hermione over the top of her mug, taking a large gulp that she instantly regretted when it turned over in her tender stomach. She put the mug back on the table slowly, being sure to make no sudden movements lest they cause her to puke all over Blaise, who had the misfortune to be opposite her.

"She doesn't want to make sure I'm alright, she wants to go over last night in extreme detail, let me know where I went wrong and then go over her plan to help me win Harry back. Which I have no bloody interest in even doing," Ginny shot back, even though she knew she'd lost. She'd lost the moment her mother had sent Hermione to find her. Hermione never failed at anything, not even finding her friends who are hiding for perfectly legitimate reasons.

"You're coming," Hermione told her, with an evil look. "I'll wait by the door, be quick." She shot an odd look at Blaise and scraped her chair back; the sound was loud in the quiet coffee shop and Ginny winced as it shot through her already sore head. When Hermione was just out of earshot, Blaise spoke.

"She's a lot odder than I remember her being."

"Yeah, that's years of my brother for you. She's held out pretty well but I think she's finally starting to crack," Ginny snorted.

"I've gotta go anyway, so I'll walk you out," Blaise told her, standing and holding out a hand to help her up. She took it with a grateful smile, feeling too terrible to care about looking weak for once.

"Ready?" Hermione asked when they met her at the door.

"Yes," Ginny sighed with an entreating look at Blaise, as though he could somehow get her out of this. He just smiled though, and leant down to whisper in her ear.

"Good luck with crazy girl."

And then he was out of the door, and it was only when his hand left hers that Ginny realised that she'd never let go.

"Ok, _what _was that about?" Hermione demanded as soon as the door swung shut behind Blaise, "You were holding hands with Blaise Zabini! You've been holding out on me, Ginny Weasley."

Ginny just rolled her eyes and pushed open the door, starting off down the street in the direction of their flat. And she most certainly didn't let her gaze linger for a moment in the opposite direction, where she could see the retreating form of Blaise Zabini.

The door to Flourish and Blotts swung open easily at her touch and she stepped into the shop with more nervousness than she had ever felt. Not even when coming to get her books for first year and her father had ended up in a fist fight had she had butterflies in her stomach quite this big. She had a reading list held tightly in one gloved hand, her excuse for being here. Sure, all of the books were muggle ones and didn't have a chance in hell of being stocked here, but it was the best she could do on short notice.

"Can I help you?" A young clerk asked her, before doing a double take when he noticed her red hair. She might not be as famous as the Golden Trio were, but that didn't mean she wasn't recognised quite often. She had fought in the battle of Hogwarts after all, and then gone on to date the precious Boy-Who-Lived, and after that gone on to break up with the Boy-Who-Lived. Those were the sort of things that got your face known. Mind you, she thought with a smile, it might just be because he'd seen the photo of her drunkenly dancing with Malfoy.

"I wanted to talk to the manager, actually," she told him.

"Oh! Of course, Miss…"

"Weasley," She told him. _Like you don't already know, _she thought.

"Of course, Miss Weasley. I'll just go get him."

"Thanks." The clerk rushed off to the back of the store and Ginny browsed a few shelves at the front of the store. There were a strange amount of muggle studies books displayed prominently and Ginny smiled when she thought of Blaise's plan to take over the world. Looked like he'd already started.

"Weasley? What are you doing here?" She whirled around, only to bump into Blaise's chest when he was closer than she thought.

"Oh, um, I…" She stuttered, staring up into his eyes. The reading list was still in her hand, but she'd forgotten all about it.

"Just couldn't go a few days without my handsome face, eh? Don't worry, a lot of people get the same problem," Blaise grinned and Ginny snapped out of it. She punched him on the arm, smiling.

"Prat," she said fondly. "The place looks good."

"It's not bad, is it? Of course, I haven't installed the hypnotising device that'll get people as they walk in the door and enslave them all to my commands yet, but the rest is shaping up well."

"Ah, well, I did think the décor was missing something," Ginny grinned.

Blaise opened his mouth, about to retort when the door opened behind them and Harry Potter stepped into the shop, talking to someone behind him. He locked eyes with Blaise for a second and then dropped his gaze to see Ginny, who hadn't noticed anything yet. She was looking up at Blaise in confusion, wondering why he hadn't answered yet. She began to turn, following his line of sight when Blaise panicked and did the only thing he could think of to stop her turning and seeing her ex-boyfriend. Well, that's what he'd tell people later anyway.

He leant down, pushed her hair away from her face, and he kissed her. Ginny froze for a long second but then she was kissing him back and his hands were in her hair and her petite body was pressed against him. Unnoticed by either of them, a reading list fell to the floor as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Harry stared in disbelief, shocked into silence. Hermione, who had stepped into the shop behind her friend smiled.

"I knew it!" She whispered.


End file.
